Someone Else's War
by Evil Chocolate of Doom
Summary: Set before the Forerunner activate the Halo Array; Ambience, a Forerunner AI specialist gets caught in a freak explosion and finds herself in another universe...
1. Chapter 1

_I am beyond evil, please don't hurt me. This has been bashing around my head ever since I finished Mass Effect._

_It's set in Forerunner times, before the Halo Array was activated for the first time._

_**Disclaimer:** **Halo and Mass Effect do not belong to poor little old me...**_

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**Chapter One: It's All Fun and Games...**

Ambience stared at her holoscreen. Not seeing the words in front of her eyes. Not that she needed to see them again, they were burned into her mind.

'Ambience, are you ill? Your bio-signs are elevated,' The small projectors located around the room glowed and a tall man appeared, dressed in simple white appeared, a frown marred his serene face.

'I'm as well as can be expected, Offensive Bias,' Ambience sighed and pushed away from the screen. She turned to look at AI she'd built. Not the best, Mendicant Bias took that, but OB was special in his own way. 'Shouldn't you be with Didact?'

'The fleet your father has issued me is assembling, there is little I can do that wouldn't be considered a nuisance,' OB explained as his avatar followed Ambiences as she made her way to her small kitchenette.

'OB? Where is your orb?' Ambience asked over her shoulder as she appraised the food dispenser menu.

'Um... elsewhere?'

'Didact is obsessing about the Librarian again, isn't he?' Ambience lent on one of the silvery benches with a sweet beverage in her hand.

'It must be hard having such a dedicated mate outside the Maginot Line,'

Ambience snorted, 'Damn organic impulses, real pain in the ass,' OB gave her a look. 'Don't look at me like that! It's true; Dad's been cranky ever since Filial Devotion became Flood chow three hundred years ago when his squad went to investigate a missing survey team on G617g,'

'Fighting a losing war for three hundred years may have also played a part,' OB's quiet voice carried a tone of rebuke.

Ambience pulled a face at him, 'But don't you see? its how all this family mess started. My brother went MIA, dad got himself an un-winnable war, mother became obsessed with saving anything with more that can be eaten by the Flood and my AI went rampant and is forcing us to commit mass suicide so **we** don't become Flood chow,'

OB frowned 'Is there any mind altering substance in your beverage by any chance?' OB sounded concerned.

Ambience waved it off, 'No, just not looking forward to having the Halo Effect pulverise my CNS. If Mendicant hadn't gone Rampant, maybe we could have won this damn war!' Ambience sighed and took a large mouthful of her drink before she could start bitching about how she fucked up with MB.

'I must leave soon, Didact is glaring at my orb and I really should be talking to him,' OB stated sadly.

'Hey Offensive Bias, before you go, if there is a chance, could you bring Mendicant back? Just a part of him. I... I want to know what I did wrong.'

OB smiled faintly and nodded his head 'Goodbye Ambience,' and faded from view. Ambience sighed once more and went back to her computer; a message was waiting, from Didact.

_Ambience, your mother has reported that the Flood have stopped feeding and moving towards the Maginot Line. Mendicant Bias has a high probability of breaching the barrier, when he does, the Halo Array will be activated._

_Goodbye, _

_Your loving father_

Ambience barely glanced at the message before deleting it. Mendicant's one goal was to prevent the Array from firing, and once again his mocking words rang in her head.

_I kill you all and I enjoy it. I destroy you in your indolent billions – in your gluttony, in your self-righteousness, in your arrogance. I pound your cities into dust turn back the clock on your civilization's progress. What has taken you millennia to achieve, I erase in seconds._

_Welcome back to the Stone Age, vermin. Welcome home._

Mendicant was her pride and joy, her crowning achievement. The most advanced AI the Forerunner had ever built, and it went rampant and joined the enemy, an enemy hell bent on consuming all sentient life in the galaxy.

A vibration ran through the ship as it started to move away, back towards the Ark. Though the ship would never make it, all the portals had been disabled. Both Ambience and the ship's crew had elected to die along with the remaining sentient life. The vibration became more pronounced as the ship entered slipspace. They would go to a nice, quiet part of the galaxy and wait for death.

Ambience thought about her mother, who'd spent the last three hundred furiously indexing various species outside the Maginot Line. Last she'd heard from her, she was on some pretty planet at the ass end of the galaxy, she'd become besotted with some mountain vista or something, nothing too unusual for the Librarian, she hadn't been quite right ever since G617g either, but then again, neither had a lot of people.

'All crew, ETA is 10 minutes,'

Ambience closed the computer and just sat; her mind a thousand miles away...

... Only to be jolted rudely back to reality as she went crashing into a wall.

'WTF!?' Rubbing her head, Ambience sat up. 'What the hell was that?'

'All crew, this is the Captain: Flood inbound, all combat crew are ordered to full combat stations, tech and civilian staff, stand by at you designated evac stations –' the captains voice was cut off as the ship bucked and rolled as the flood vessel hit them again.

Ambience cursed as she was once again thrown in the wall. When the ship was relatively still, she stood with all haste and quickly donned her class 12 combat skin and headed towards the evac station. Become Flood chow was not her highest priority.

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While Ambience got her ass to the evac station, the Flood vessel that had rammed the freighter out of slipspace was currently was currently wedged together with said freighter. The Flood command form in control of the ship didn't mind one bit, now the food couldn't get away...

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Unbeknownst to either the Forerunner or the Flood; the Flood vessel had damaged the freighter's overhauled engines. The said engines were starting to redline as the captain tried to untangle the ships. His efforts were in vain, as the command form was not willing to let the food go. Unlike the captain however, the Flood wasn't panicking, it wasn't even aware that their ship's reactors were starting to go critical. It was pure luck that both ships exploded at the same time, though the results of the explosion were going to raise some serious question marks...

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_A lot of this is what my twisted mind has put together using the bits and pieces of Halo trivia I've found. So don't be too mean. Sorry if its a bit everywhere, I wrote this at 2 am..._

_Please read and review_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two: A Flying Particle Will Seek the Nearest Eye**

One Commander Jane Shepard stood on the command bridge of the SSV Normandy, her dark blue eyes tracing star clusters of the holographic representation of the galaxy. The crew tossing her discrete glances, concerned by their commanding officer's sombre mood.

Shepard was getting frustrated. Despite what she told the council, she had no idea on how to find the Reapers, let destroy them. It took the combined efforts of the Council and Alliance fleets to destroy Sovereign and he was just the vanguard, and even then the casualty rate was high.

'Commander,' Joker's voice pulled her out of her thoughts 'I'm picking some weird ass readings from a nearby system. Do you want to investigate?'

'Engage the stealth systems and see if you can get us a visual. Spectre intel hasn't mentioned any Geth activity in this system. I'll be up soon.' Shepard replied, her mind welcoming the distraction.

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Liara and Kaiden were up with Joker, examining the first of the visuals.

'I don't recognise the ships design,' Joker commented 'and they aren't on any of the data bases I have access to,'

'I'm somewhat concerned about the growths coming off the second ship,' Kaiden voiced his concern while thoughtfully inspection one of the screens showing the infected. 'If it's organic it must extremely resilient to be able to survive in deep space,'

Shepard glanced at a free terminal and silently agreed with Joker about the make of ship, the only ship she'd seen to compare would be Sovereign and even then, it lacked the quicksilver grace and deadly curves of the alien vessels. Sheppard felt a ray of hope, if they could salvage something from these ships... both were about three kilometres long and brisling with what she assumed were laser turrets and almost looked like they came from the era in which the Citadel Station was constructed.

'Can you detect any life-signs from either of the vessels?'

Joker gave the commander a look 'You're not thinking about boarding them are you, Commander?'

Shepard's eyes never left the fused warships, 'This is unknown technology and looks to be way beyond our current level. I believe one of those ships could take on a Reaper and win,'

Liara and Kaiden exchanged almost exasperated looks, familiar with the Commanders single mindedness.

'From the mostly intact ship I'm detecting maybe several dozen life-forms though they're disappearing fast. From the other ship... it's strange... they're not Geth but they don't quite qualify as alive...' Joker trailed off, frowning at one of the readouts.

Kaiden snorted 'So what? Zombies?'

'Beats me, but watch out there's a hell of a lot of them.'

Shepard turned to Liara 'You're with me, go suit up and meet me in the cargo hold,'

'Yes, Commander,'

'Joker, keep me updated,'

'Yes, ma'am,'

Nodding to Kaiden, Shepard left to go find Wrex.

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'I've never seen anything like this alloy, not even in the Prothean digs I've excavated anyway,' Liara commented as she closely inspected the silvery alloy and the geometric shapes carved into the surface of the ship's docking bay.

Shepard nodded absently as she and Wrex took in the signs of combat. The scorch marks on the walls and floors, cargo and supply crates smashed and damaged, a holo-stand spitting out sparks and the splashes of red blood and viscous-y green goo that was almost luminous. What puzzled the two warriors though, was the disturbing lack of bodies.

'A battle took place here,' Wrex's rough voice carried in the gloomy chamber, 'but where are the bodies, with this much blood, someone must have died,'

'With the amount of damage it looks as if the fire fight was too intense for sides to collect the fallen,' Shepard added before cautiously moving towards the exit doors. As she neared, the round seal on the door spun before compressing and causing the door to split into two and slide into the floor and ceiling with barely a whisper.

The corridor beyond was just as gloomy and battle scared as the docking bay. Moving forward the trio continued to pass through the ship, the oppressive silence that reminded Shepard of the other deserted ships she'd explored before, but some gut feeling, the one that made sure she survived the slum she grew up in, Thresher Maws, giant chunks of Reaper and the many other life or death situations being a soldier got her into, was screaming at her that things were not as they seemed.

Creeping down yet another corridor, it was Wrex who heard it first. Halting, he tilted his to side trying to understand what he was hearing. Shepard and Liara stopped too and strained their senses. Faintly they heard as strange squelching hissing sound, as the sound became louder Wrex checked his assault rifle, Liara drew her pistol and Shepard readied her shotgun.

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**Wow, I've finally updated! Life has been a pain in the ass for the last six months, whith starting uni then dropping out and bludging around home... Thankyou to all the dear dear people who reviewed. I've suddenly been hit with inspiration for this story so hopefully the next chapter is going to be up a lot quicker. **


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three: Severe Head Trauma Is No Excuse**

The first thing Ambience was aware of when she returned to consciousness was the horrible, painful throbbing of her head. Which confused her, didn't the Great Journey into the afterlife meant to be painless? She was meant to be dead; the dead don't get headaches the size of a large star system.

Slowly a sharp beep, pulsing in time with her head made itself known. With a groan, she opened her eyes and saw the flashing icon on her Heads up Display that indicated that her combat skin shields were empty and damaged.

Quietly growling, Ambience used her neural implants that allowed her to link her mind with directly into nearby computer systems to shut down the infernal noise. Next she followed up with a full system scan to find out just how much damage her suit had sustained.

A few seconds later, she received the data. Ambience winced as she noted her shield had almost failed, the vacuum seals were compromised and the entire left leg was likely to seize. The suits built in medical scans indicated she had a concussion, a sprained knee and a broken wrist along with a nice collection of scrapes and bruises.

Slowly standing, Ambience hobbled over to a nearby computer terminal that was still operational. As the cover slid away and the yellow/orange light bathed her face, she felt the slight tingle that signified her implants connecting with the ship network.

Her attention was instantly flagged by the shipboard AI. While nowhere near as powerful as Mendicant and Offensive Bias, they were contender class; Gossamer was an entourage class AI. She'd been called into action after the Flood had wiped out several of the main military bases, destroy a large number of combat AIs.

'Greetings Lady Ambience, you are currently one of eighty nine survivors. Ship sensors indicate a number of ten thousand plus Flood specimens and three unknown bipedal life forms aboard this vessel.'

'How many ships are in the vicinity?' Ambience inquired pushing down her confusion, she was meant to be dead...

'A Flood controlled vessel is currently locked with the _Divine Winds_, an unknown alien vessel is currently five kilometres away and holding position, scanners indicate the vessel to be mid to low tier three technology.'

Acknowledging Gossamer, Ambience disconnected from the terminal, what little military training she had urging her not to stay in one place for too long, especially with a large number of uncontained Flood on board.

As she started to move away from the terminal, she opened a communication link with the AI. 'Gossamer, I need to find the ranking officer onboard. Also get into contact with the unknown ship and tell them to leave the system ASAP. If the language isn't on record, upload it onto the databases and distribute it to all survivors with a warning about the unknowns.'

'I'm currently translating the unknown language. The surviving Forerunner are cut off from your position by an increasing number of Flood combat forms. The unknown sentients are currently moving from docking bay 5C.'

Curious about the Tier 3 unknowns, her natural curiosity along with the short distance between their respective positions, Ambience made her way towards the docking bay.

'Gossamer, how long until the Final Protocols are initiated, and where are we exactly?'

The AI was silent, quietly pondering over the disturbing data she was gathering. When Gossamer did speak up her voice was hesitant. 'Shipboard time devices indicate that the Final Protocol was activated fifteen minutes ago.'

Ambience stumbled in shock, jarring her injuries. Her mind coming to the horrifying conclusion that Offensive Bias had failed and Mendicant Bias and the Gravemind had totally breached the Maginot Line and stopped the activation.

'But,' Gossamer hurried on, her self-preservation programming not wanting to anger the woman who had designed every AI matrix for the last three hundred years, 'my scans of the local star positions are not corresponding with any star maps on record, even the long range scans.'

Ambience froze as her mind started to shut down from her overactive conclusions.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four: Top of the Food Chain**

Shepard tightened her grip on her shotgun as the bad feeling that had been niggling at her roared into a crescendo. Wrex and Liara shared a concerned glance as they sensed the Commander's sudden tensing.

Not noticing her companions, Shepard started to inch forward carefully, every fibre of her being focused on her surroundings in a way that she hadn't used since the Thresher Maws of -. Her awareness paid off when a small squid like creature fell down from a maintenance shaft. It paused, balanced on its many tentacles, before launching itself at a surprising speed at the surprised trio.

Shepard calmly blasted the creature and watched as streamers of flesh and a green blood splattered across the floor.

'What was that?' Liara asked, watching a thin, green fleshy membrane slid down the wall. Another wet splat had Liara and Shepard spinning around to face Wrex who was currently grumbling about having to clean goo from his armour and the green goop slowly slid down his fingers.

'What? I only swatted one.' The Krogan rumbled, shaking goo from his hand.

'Are they as fragile as they look?' Shepard asked, her survival instinct screaming at her to get off the ship warring with her desire to destroy the Reapers.

'Barely touched the bastard,' the two females swore that the Krogan was close to pouting as one of his kind could get.

'Are we going to continue into the ship or pull back?' Liara couldn't help but ask. Hiding a shiver, she couldn't help but wonder what was so wrong with the unknown ship.

Shepard went to answer but swirled around to face the loud crashing that was coming from around the corner. Readying her gun, Shepard once again crept forward flanked by Wrex and Liara. Before they could react an armoured figure swung around the corner while tossing a glowing blue ball over its shoulder.

Shepard trained her gun onto the figure, 'who are you?' in retrospect it wasn't the best line considering they were trespassing on an unknown ship.

The figure's helmeted head turned towards the trio and all three saw themself reflected in the silver visor. The brief lull was destroyed when a gurgling mass of flesh jumped around the corner and thrust what used to be an arm at the armoured figure. Following survival instincts all four of them fired at the vaguely humanoid creature.

The armoured figure sighed in what Shepard swore was relief. Before she could ponder what was happening the figure started speaking in a strange language.

'Can you understand any of that, Liara?' Shepard asked not wanting to take her eyes off the strange figure.

'Sorry Commander. All tell you is that it's a very complex language and I've never heard anything like it,' Liara shook her head, concentrating on memorizing the complex tones of the unknown language.

The figure stopped mid sentence and shook it's head in what the trio could tell was annoyance, causing the three to tense up.

'Forgive me; it took a little effort to recalibrate my language translator. Very interesting language you use, it shows promise,' a female voice come from the armoured figure.

'So who are you, what are you and is this your ship?' Shepard asked, she was starting to run out of patience and was looking forward to leaving the blasted ship behind.

'My name translates into Ambience, I am a Forerunner and my race built this ship and while I'd love to stay and chat, there is a large number of Flood inbound to our position and we really don't want to be here to greet them,' The figure started to move towards them, causing all three to raise their weapons.

'What are the Flood?' it was Wrex who asked.

'A semi-sentient life form that's main goal is to 'eat' or infect all other sentient life-forms in the galaxy. Not the best way to go out, infact its quite painful, but if you want to stand around and become Flood chow don't let me stop you,' as the unknown woman spoke she glided past the three man squad and continued toward the docking bay.

'How many of these Flood creatures are coming?' Shepard asked, becoming worried, her mind already putting together _why_ the strange life forms were called 'the Flood'.

'At last count there were over 10,000 Flood onboard but that has certainly increased,'

Wrex and Liara looked at Shepard. Shepard was considering the stranger's words, she spoke with familiarity of the Flood, and Shepard was coming to some nasty conclusions based on what she'd briefly seen.

Motioning the others forward, the trio followed the rapidly moving 'Forerunner'.


	5. Chapter 5

_My God! An update!_

_This is for all the awesome people who reviewed and/or faved/alerted and thus got me off arse! Sorry it's short and crappy_

**Chapter Five: Don't Ask Me! I'm Making This Up As I Go!**

Ambience followed the unknown Aliens.

From what she could gather, the leader was a female humanoid called Shepard, who closely resembled a Forerunner but Gossamer's scans indicated that Shepard's species lacked many of the defining genetic quirks of the Forerunner. Shepard's support included another female called Liara. Scans showed that the blue humanoid had an incredibly complex neural control. The last second companion was Wrex. Scans and observation clearly indicated that his race was extremely hardy and warrior like. Ambience was surprised to see him; a species expected, according to her mother's research, to evolve into advanced sentience approximately one hundred thousand years after the Halo Effect.

Reluctantly putting aside her curiosity, Ambience boarded the alien landing craft only to be met by the steady gaze of Commander Shepard.

'Some answers would be appreciated,'

Cradling her wrist, Ambience nodded 'Of course, I have some inquiries myself,'

'Are you injured? You have been favouring your leg and wrist?' Liara cut in before Shepard could get started.

'Don't worry about it until we get to your main vessel,' Ambience dismissed, 'my combat skin will keep my health under control until I can see a medical professional. You have questions, Commander?'

'Who are your people? I've never seen anything like the technology on board that ship, let alone the ship itself!' Wrex grumbled.

Liara frowned thoughtfully, 'how did you wind up in such a remote area? There are no Mass Relays for light years,'

Shepard frowned and leaned forward, 'Just how dangerous are the Flood?'

Ambience sighed. It was going to tricky to answer in ways someone from a Tier 3 society would understand.

'My people call themselves, translated into your languages, Forerunner. We are and old race who have spent millennia guiding and protecting the fledgling races of our home galaxy. This was a mantle passed onto us by a people we only know as the Precursors.' Ambience shook her head, they didn't need a history lesson that may or may not be relevant.

Pacing she started to mutter, 'how to put it into words?'

Shepard crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow.

Shaking her head yet again, Ambience turned back to Shepard and retook her seat.

'I mean no disrespect, but frankly your society ranks, technology wise, as a mid to low Tier 3, were as the Forerunner rank Tier 1 and the legendary Precursors rank at Tier 0,'

'Wait!' Shepard snapped, her temper starting to fray, 'what the hell are these "tiers"'

'Tier 3 – Space-faring, Tier 1 – World builders, Tier 0 –Transsentient . See the technological gaps? Anyway, some three hundred years ago, a research team exploring some boring planet went missing. The search party sent to find them was decimated by some unknown biological.

So fast forward those three centuries, and what do you have? A dying _world builder_ society all but annihilated. And in some bizarre freak accident I have no idea where I am, when I am and what theories I have are just ridiculous!'

Ambience flopped back in her seat, exhausted. Her head was whirling with theories, annoyance and embarrassment at her lack of control.

The aliens where stunned silent. Trying to make sense of the rant they'd just been subjected to.

The silence persisted as the small craft docked with the larger ship.

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_It has been years. I cheated/stuffed up with the last update and uploaded the wrong chapter and only noticed last year o.O_

_Shitty short chapter is shitty and short. This is mostly to get my head back into the fandoms (and get my writing into gear, its been **years**). New plot devices have come out for both Halo and Mass Effect and I'm very behind so I'm mostly going on what was known back in 2008/09._

_I have a whole list of things to blame which include living with a creativity stifling family member (anything I did in 09 sucked arse), Skyrim, my shitty TV for making me unable to read anything in ME2 (and you bioware for making your damn game so hard to read on shitty TVs, I didn't have this problem with ME1!), Skyrim, laziness, totaling my car, cooking the engine in my new car, more inclination to draw etc etc._

_Another big thankyou to all the people who have expressed an interest in my story, you all guilted me into writing again._


End file.
